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Fantastic Mr. Fox
MultiplexesFantastic Mr. Fox, one of Roald Dahl’s shorter novels, is significantly less dark than many of his other tales for children. (Though many of his tales felt less dark anyway once the whimsical illustrator Quentin Blake began doing the drawings for them.) But Mr. Fox is typical Dahl fare, pitting a wily outsider against repressive authority figures, in this case the terrible farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean (“one short, one fat, one lean”). Dahl was never satisfied with the film adaptations of his books, even protesting 1990’s The Witches outside a theater with a megaphoneand that was a particularly dark piece directed by Don’t Look Now‘s Nicolas Roeg. But allegedly, this new adaptation by Wes Anderson comes the closest of any film to capturing the humor and neuroses at the heart of Dahl’s best work. Me, I was always fond of the Danny Devito-directed Matilda, from 1996. Read our review. Zack Smith
